My Broken Vagina: One Woman's Quest to Fix Her Sex Life, and Yours


Fran Bushe - 2021
    Unsurprisingly, neither worked.After a visit to Sex Camp and many attempts to fix her 'broken' vagina, Fran decided to share her own hilarious, excruciating, and sometimes upsetting experiences. With the help of her 16 year old self's diary, expert advice,  candid and enlightening interviews with others about sex,  and some self-care exercises, Fran sets about trying to make herself, and other people, feel like they're not being gaslit by their own vaginas.

Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper


Diablo Cody - 2005
    At the age of twenty-four, Diablo Cody decided there had to be more to life than typing copy at an ad agency. She soon managed to find inspiration from a most unlikely source— amateur night at the seedy Skyway Lounge. While she doesn’t take home the prize that night, Diablo discovers to her surprise the act of stripping is an absolute thrill. This is Diablo’s captivating fish-out-of-water story of her yearlong walk on the wild side, from quiet gentlemen’s clubs to multilevel sex palaces and glassed-in peep shows. In witty prose she gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at this industry through a writer’s keen eye, chronicling her descent into the skin trade and the effect it had on her self-image and her relationship with her now husband.

Confessions of a Good Christian Girl: The Secrets Women Keep and the Grace That Saves Them


Tammy Maltby - 2007
    It is also a passionate testimony to the Lord's eagerness to cleanse and heal those who turn to Him. And it is a fervent appeal to God's people to own up to the sin, brokenness and shame in our midst and to extend to each other the same persistent, healing grace that Jesus extends to us.

Some Girls: My Life in a Harem


Jillian Lauren - 2010
    The casting director told her that a rich businessman in Singapore would pay pretty American girls $20,000 if they stayed for two weeks to spice up his parties. Soon, Jillian was on a plane to Borneo, where she would spend the next eighteen months in the harem of Prince Jefri Bolkiah, youngest brother of the Sultan of Brunei, leaving behind her gritty East Village apartment for a palace with rugs laced with gold and trading her band of artist friends for a coterie of backstabbing beauties.More than just a sexy read set in an exotic land, Some Girls is also the story of how a rebellious teen found herself-and the courage to meet her birth mother and eventually adopt a baby boy.

Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America How to Love


Thomas Maier - 2009
    This critically acclaimed biography offers an unprecedented look at William Masters and Virginia Johnson, their pioneering studies on intimacy, and their lasting impact on the love lives of today's men and women.

Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers’ Rights


Molly Smith - 2018
    You often hear, "There should be a law against it!" Or, perhaps just against the buyers. What do sex workers want? That's not something you hear asked very often. In this accessible manifesto, the strong argument for full decriminalization of sex work is explored through personal experience and looking at laws around the world.In some places, like New York, selling sex is illegal. In others, like Sweden, only buying it is. In some, like the UK and France, it's legal to sell sex and to buy it, but not to run a brothel or solicit a sale. In New Zealand, it's not illegal at all. In What Do Sex Workers Want?, Juno Mac and Molly Smith - both sex workers - explain what each of these laws do in practice to those doing the work. Addressing each model in turn, they show that prohibiting the sex industry actually exacerbates every harm that sex workers are vulnerable to.

Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul


Karen Abbott - 2007
    Operating in Chicago’s notorious Levee district at the dawn of the last century, the Club’s proprietors, two aristocratic sisters named Minna and Ada Everleigh, welcomed moguls and actors, senators and athletes, foreign dignitaries and literary icons, into their stately double mansion, where thirty stunning Everleigh “butterflies” awaited their arrival. Courtesans named Doll, Suzy Poon Tang, and Brick Top devoured raw meat to the delight of Prince Henry of Prussia and recited poetry for Theodore Dreiser. Whereas lesser madams pocketed most of a harlot’s earnings and kept a “whipper” on staff to mete out discipline, the Everleighs made sure their girls dined on gourmet food, were examined by an honest physician, and even tutored in the literature of Balzac.Not everyone appreciated the sisters’ attempts to elevate the industry. Rival Levee madams hatched numerous schemes to ruin the Everleighs, including an attempt to frame them for the death of department store heir Marshall Field, Jr. But the sisters’ most daunting foes were the Progressive Era reformers, who sent the entire country into a frenzy with lurid tales of “white slavery-the allegedly rampant practice of kidnapping young girls and forcing them into brothels. This furor shaped America’s sexual culture and had repercussions all the way to the White House, including the formation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.With a cast of characters that includes Jack Johnson, John Barrymore, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., William Howard Taft, “Hinky Dink” Kenna, and Al Capone, Sin in the Second City is Karen Abbott’s colorful, nuanced portrait of the iconic Everleigh sisters, their world-famous Club, and the perennial clash between our nation’s hedonistic impulses and Puritanical roots. Culminating in a dramatic last stand between brothel keepers and crusading reformers, Sin in the Second City offers a vivid snapshot of America’s journey from Victorian-era propriety to twentieth-century modernity.

Real Sex for Real Women


Laura Berman - 2008
    Laura Berman shows how it is possible to combine the reality of everyday life with fantastic sex. Sex in real life is not the sex we see in the media, and this book's images and advice reflect life and sex naturally. This book helps the reader to connect with her own sexuality, looking at physical and emotional health, and how she feelsabout herself and sex. Dr. Laura then provides information on techniques and tips on how to maximize your sex life, including how to express your needs and explore new positions.Best-selling author and renowned sex therapist, Dr. Laura Berman is America's leading expert in female sexual health. She is the founder and director of the Berman Center in Chicago, which specializes in sexual health and therapy, and she is assistant clinical professor of psychiatry and obstetrics/gynecology atthe Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University.

Easy


Kerry Cohen - 2006
    At the ripe young age of fourteen Jessica has discovered that getting the attention she wants is just that—easy. It’s not the attention of a divorced mother who spends all of her time grieving over a broken marriage. Nor is it that of a father with a new girlfriend who’s moving on with his life. It’s certainly not the attention of a clueless older sister or a best friend since grade school who still acts like she’s in grade school. No. For some reason being noticed by her friends and family seems to have become almost impossible. Boys—and men—are a different matter altogether. With the right clothes and attitude, Jessica realizes that she can get all the male attention she wants.What she doesn’t realize is how easy it is to get more than you’re ready for.In this compelling and often harrowing novel for teen readers, first-time author Kerry Cohen Hoffmann delves into the mind of a teenage girl as she attempts to replace the shifting relationships with friends and family with sexual exploration. With candid storytelling rooted in years of personal experience, Mrs. Hoffmann offers a searing look at how easy it is to take a wrong turn in search for the right answers.

Post-Porn Modernist


Annie Sprinkle - 1991
    Originally published by Art Unlimited (Amsterdam, 1991). 150 photos. Size D.

Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work


Melissa Gira Grant - 2014
    Recent years have seen a panic over "online red-light districts," which supposedly seduce vulnerable young women into a life of degradation, and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof's live tweeting of a Cambodian brothel raid. The current trend for writing about and describing actual experiences of sex work fuels a culture obsessed with the behaviour of sex workers. Rarely do these fearful dispatches come from sex workers themselves, and they never seem to deviate from the position that sex workers must be rescued from their condition, and the industry simply abolished—a position common among feminists and conservatives alike. In Playing the Whore, journalist Melissa Gira Grant turns these pieties on their head, arguing for an overhaul in the way we think about sex work. Based on ten years of writing and reporting on the sex trade, and grounded in her experience as an organizer, advocate, and former sex worker, Playing the Whore dismantles pervasive myths about sex work, criticizes both conditions within the sex industry and its criminalization, and argues that separating sex work from the "legitimate" economy only harms those who perform sexual labor. In Playing the Whore, sex workers' demands, too long relegated to the margins, take center stage: sex work is work, and sex workers' rights are human rights.

Unaccompanied Women: Late-Life Adventures in Love, Sex, and Real Estate


Jane Juska - 2006
    She relayed her fun and frank exploits in the bestseller A Round-Heeled Woman. Now Juska continues her astonishing story in this much anticipated new adventure.Five years after that fateful ad, Juska has become a friend and confessor for women of all ages who confide in her their poignant, tragic, or blissful stories– unaccompanied women who are alone for now, but ever searching for intimacy. And in spite of Juska’s own success, “unaccompanied” is a description that applies to her as well. She’s still looking for a man to keep her company–not a husband, not even a partner, but simply the perfect lover, once described by Katharine Hepburn as one who “lives nearby and visits often.”Unaccompanied Women embraces not only Juska’s continuing explorations of Eros (note to fans: her younger lover, Graham, is still on the scene) but also a blossoming literary career that catapults her from San Francisco to New York, London, and Paris. At book signings, earnest men place themselves purposely at the end of the line in order to engage her in private conversations, while women linger to confess their own erotic longings and their experiences with the good, the bad, and even the ugly. All the while, Juska is coping with the unnerving possibility of losing her home, a tiny cottage in Berkeley, California–and so her search broadens and intensifies, not just for love, friendship, and sex but also for enough money to keep a roof over her head. Jane Juska shares all this richness of living in a poignant and humorous exploration of emotional terrain rarely discussed in our society. This wise and warmhearted book provides vivid evidence that the pursuit of pleasure and lasting relationships is not just for the young, but also for the young at heart.From the Hardcover edition.

Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads, and Cashing in on Internet Sexploration


Audacia Ray - 2007
    Naked on the Internet explores how women use cyberspace, personally and professionally, to learn about themselves, connect with others, and make a living. Author Audacia Ray then goes further, examining the Internet as a valuable — though often problematic — sexual space.Ray combines her insider's knowledge with the voices of a variety of women whose firsthand experiences include camming, chatting, and making websites; dating, hooking up, and forming friendships; sex and relationship blogging; and making porn and doing other forms of sex work. She also examines the power of sexual health and online support communities and the technology that enables physical sexual encounters.Naked on the Internet is a guide to the ways women use, experience, and cash in on the Internet, as well as a critical analysis of the empowering and oppressive aspects of women's online experiences.

With the Kisses of His Mouth


Monique Roffey - 2011
    Emotionally reeling, Monique Roffey went searching not just for lovers but to experience the furthest limits of her sexuality.

Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution


Rachel Moran - 2013
    The result is riveting, compelling, incontestable. Impossible to put down. This book provides all anyone needs to know about the reality of prostitution in moving, insightful prose that engages and disposes of every argument ever raised in its favor.” —Catharine A. MacKinnon, law professor, University of Michigan and Harvard UniversityBorn to mentally unstable parents, Rachel Moran left home at the age of fourteen. Being homeless, she became prostituted to survive. With intelligence and empathy, she describes the fears she and others had working on the streets and in the brothels. Moran also speaks to the psychological damage that accompanies prostitution and the estrangement from one’s body. At the age of twenty-two, Moran escaped prostitution. She has since become a writer and an abolitionist activist.